In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions of biosemiotics.

In biosemiotics, living beings are not conceived of as the passive result of anonymous selection pressures acted upon through the course of evolution. Rather, organisms are considered active participants that influence, shape and re-shape other organisms, the surrounding environment, and eventually also their own constitutional and functional integrity. The traditional Darwinian division between natural and sexual selection seems insufficient to encompass the richness of these processes, particularly in light of recent knowledge on communicational processes in the realm of life. Here, (...) we introduce the concepts of semiotic selection and semiotic co-option which in part represent a reinterpretation of classical biological terms and, at the same time, keep explanations sensitive to semiosic processes taking place in living nature. We introduce the term ‘semiotic selection’ to emphasize the fact that actions of different semiotic subjects (selectors) will produce qualitatively different selection pressures. Thereafter, ‘semiotic co-option’ explains how semiotic selection may shape appearance in animals through remodelling existing forms and relations. Considering the event of co-option followed by the process of semiotic selection enables us to describe the evolution of semantic organs. (shrink)